Musicians are a crazy lot. I don't have to mention Syd Barrett, Rick James, or that Brian Jonestown Massacre temper tantrum dude to prove just how many artists are a few acorns short of a nuthouse. There's something about the freaks, though, that draws the groupies out in spades. The fans want to hear you, see you, touch you, give you their shitty band's demo, tell you they met you back in 1996 at a party with that guy whatshisnuts; they want it all. The business of mainstream rock starism is such a formulaic spiel that being kinda touched in the head has its advantages. Vincent Gallo may act demented, but in the end, the guy takes being an eccentric all the way to your bank account. And why not? He's pretty genuinely talented - in both the arts and the marketing of said arts.

Any casual shopper at www.vgmerchandise.com knows there's nothing Gallo won't sell. You can buy his baby making seed for a cool million. Ladies - the ones who were "naturally born female" -- can have a "fantasy night" with the creator/star of Buffalo 66 and Brown Bunny for upwards of $50,000. (Entertainers take note - if a devotee wants to be the Chloe Sevigny to your erect member that badly, why give away for free what you can charge to MasterCard?). Eight-track cassettes he scratched his ass with are $200. Dog shit he's stepped in costs the price of a small island. So really, in reviewing Gallo's Mission Creek Music Fest show at Bimbo's, let's cut to the chase and discuss his merch.

Take home that shirt of Gallo and George Bush and you're drinking well whiskey for the rest of the year -- you and the 13 other suckers who can't screenprint at home.

Gallo's artwork went for around $40 a pop. CDs skyrocketed from $20. People ate this shit up. Luckily, though, there was still a signed copy of his Paper magazine interview available at the end of the night. Phew.

Feeding Gallo's fragile ego one $20 at a time.

I couldn't hear what this Gallo patron was saying, but I'm sure it was something like you've got to give it up for VG. It takes balls to be such a tongue and cheek whore. I bet there are a ton of artists that'd love to charge $50 for their hangnails, but they just slap their band names on 5,000 American Apparel tees and call it a day. Gallo is one smart cocktease, simultaneously creating his artiste notoriety and expensing you for taking note of it.

I got busted for having a camera at the show, so my Kodak spent most of the evening behind the coat check (Gallo refused to allow cameras, opening acts, or house music to mar the mood of his performance). So no live footage of Gallo rocking here--no photos of he and friend Sean Lennon trading off playing bass, double necked guitar, acoustic guitar, and keyboards. But I can tell you the show ruled. (And I did shoot photos for the 45 minutes Gallo stuck around to meet chicks and local band dudes after the show. Images below).

If you've seen Gallo's movies, you're familiar with the kind of soundscapes he goes for. It's dreamy, ethereal stuff. Gallo might not have known the name of the festival he was performing at but he knew how to cast a spell on the crowd. His moody, merlot-friendly torch songs were cinematic even in such a stripped down setting (it was just he and Lennon all night). They performed postmodern romantic odes, referencing Gallo's affinity for prog rock (specifically his Yes obsession) and wooing the crowded room with their cozy vibe. Although Gallo's supersized ego is usually the first thing he confronts you with, his music is infectiously intimate and personal; his vocals are featherweight, offering just a light dusting of that Gallo persona. He performed a beautiful cover of "Autumn Leaves," a song he said his father taught him, and joked with Lennon about which McCartney song he liked the best.

Gallo was really affable and upbeat between songs, despite claming, "I hardly play live so I'm a little uptight tonight," and saying he'd lost his voice because he'd spent a recent afternoon "sitting in my car and screaming."

Other things Gallo admitted on stage: that he never dated PJ Harvey (she was "just a friend"); that he was never friends with Chloe Sevigny ("she was Harmony's friend"); that he still has a thing for an ex named Vicky who lives in SF; that his first job in New York was as a male prostitute (shocker).

As mentioned, Gallo stuck around for a while after the show, signing autographs (for free, mind you) and getting his scruffy mug shot multiple times. This guy randomly played the piano for part of the impromptu "meet and greet." That was nice.

And this guy filmed the swarm of Gallo true believers.

I met some cool girls hanging out after the show. This one had a bouquet of daisies, a CD, and a card for Mr. Gallo.

The Bimbo's crowd was well dressed for the evening -- high class all the way.

But really, when you're drunk by 11 on a Friday night, class can get kinda overrated kinda fast. We skipped out on Gallo's offer - to the entire audience, during his show - to come visit the poor lonely star at his Phoenix hotel room (I'm about $50,000 short for that one), and hit one of the most slamming, debaucherous monthlies San Francisco has going, Blow Up at the Rickshaw. It's always a blast. My gut tells me this is promoter/DJ Jefrodesiac on the turntables, but my gut has been wrong so many times before (especially when it's stewing in so much red wine).

Blow Up is great. People hit it sloppy drunk and really dance their ass - or just their pants - off.

All the kids are dancing these days.

How can you go wrong with Too Short? (Although I loved hearing that damn hooky Gnarls Barkley hit, "Crazy" a little more)

Note: the Rickshaw stop has actual rickshaws for you to lounge in.

Turquoise.

Scorpion Man - aka Gold Chains - took the stage late night. I really couldn't tell you what he sounded like at that point in my booze consumption (other than it was loud, and electronic). I can tell you that in person he looked like he should either be slathered with oil in South Beach or doing the 2006 comeback tour in Tears for Fears.

By the end of the evening, everyone was aglow with the memories all the fun that'd been had, even if we didn't come home to Vincent Gallo's mint condition drool on our pillows.
- Jennifer Maerz

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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